It was, within the sweeping arc of U.S. historical past, one among our best moments.
Sixty years in the past this June, President John F. Kennedy seemed out over the walled-off metropolis of West Berlin and proclaimed to a whole lot of 1000’s of cheering Germans, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” I’m a Berliner.
It was Kennedy’s method of telling West Berliners, 22 lengthy months after Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev encircled them with a concrete wall bristling with barbed wire and lethal armaments, that America stood with them. And that this “offense not solely in opposition to historical past however…in opposition to humanity,” as Kennedy so aptly referred to as it, would sometime go.
JFK’s phrases echoed in my head as I examine a decision handed, 87-54, Tuesday by the Maine Home of Representatives. It declares that Mainers “share democratic values with the individuals of Ukraine and stand in solidarity with the individuals of Ukraine as they struggle for his or her sovereignty, territorial integrity and democracy.”
Straightforward to get behind? One would assume so.
However greater than three quarters of Home’s 67 Republicans, led by Minority Chief Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor and Rep. John Andrews of Paris, voted no. The Maine Senate, in the meantime, permitted the decision Thursday, 27-4.
Faulkingham referred to as the decision “dangerously near battle propaganda.” Andrews referred to as Ukraine, which has spent the final 12 months actually combating for its life, “probably the most corrupt nations on the planet.”
“One-sided and inflammatory resolutions like these are irresponsible and needs to be voted down,” Andrews mentioned. “With all of this virtue-signaling that’s dangerously near warmongering, I have to ask, Madam Speaker, what occurred to the antiwar left? The place have they gone?”
You’ve received at hand it to those guys. They huff alike, they puff alike, and, as they trot in lockstep behind the clown automotive that’s Fox Information, they blow democracy down.
That day in Berlin, Kennedy knew the facility of his phrases. It was written on the faces of all these individuals who yearned solely to be free, to return and go as they happy, to dwell exterior the shadow of an authoritarian regime bent on reducing them off from the remainder of the free world.
As we speak in Ukraine, life is way worse. The place Khrushchev was a chilly warrior, Russian President Vladimir Putin is quick changing into a madman. Because the Home decision famous, “Russia is waging a barbarous battle that features systematic violations of worldwide regulation, inhumane assaults on civilians and significant infrastructure, torture, sexual violence and compelled deportation, kidnappings and unlawful adoption of youngsters.”
To wit: Eight thousand Ukrainian civilian deaths, together with 400 kids. 13 thousand civilians wounded. Cities and cities pulverized into mud. Hundreds of thousands displaced from their properties. And nonetheless it goes on.
How anybody can view the Ukrainians as something lower than heroic is past me. They only handed the one-year mark for a resistance that was alleged to collapse inside days. Whereas we complain in regards to the newest snowstorm or an hours-long energy outage, they mild candles to see at night time and burn no matter wooden they will discover to remain heat.
Cheer them on? After all we should always.
Assist them defend themselves? It’s the precise factor to do – morally and strategically.
Ship a message, nonetheless symbolic, that Maine helps Ukraine’s patriots? Of their current wrestle for freedom, we glimpse our previous.
What makes the fake outrage spewing from Faulkingham, Andrews and their ilk so pathetic is its utter detachment from what have been as soon as bedrock Republican rules – the precise to self-determination, our shared obligation to foster and defend democracy right here and overseas, the all-too-true mantra that “freedom isn’t free.”
As an alternative, we now have Republican speaking factors – rooted within the delusions of Donald Trump or the duplicity of Tucker Carlson – that start and finish with one underlying premise: President Biden and the Democrats are unhealthy! And Vladimir Putin, for just a little man, is one hell of an autocrat!
Take Trump and the Fox follies out of this combine and I’ll wager this manufactured outrage would evaporate sooner than gasoline on scorching pavement. I can see Faulkingham, left to his personal gadgets, marching with a large American flag into the water off Winter Harbor bellowing “Grasp on, Ukrainian brothers! Billy Bob’s coming!”
As for Andrews, I used to be struck by his invocation of the “anti-war left.” Maybe their relative silence within the face of Russia’s assault on Ukraine displays what wise People already know: Within the face of Putin’s unbridled aggression, Ukrainians are compelled to defend themselves. And within the title of all America stands for, we’re compelled to assist them.
Nearly 1 / 4 century after Kennedy electrified West Berlin, President Ronald Reagan demanded of his Soviet counterpart, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” And down it lastly got here, adopted shortly by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Thanks in no small half to 2 American presidents – one a Democrat, the opposite a Republican – the free world prevailed. Now, knee-jerk naysayers however, democracy as soon as once more calls for our time, our resolve, and sure, our treasure.
We’re all Ukrainians.
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